Complete video of Ales Bialiatski's press conference for Lithuanian media

On 27 June in Vilnius, Head of the Human Rights Center "Viasna", vice-president of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and one of the founders of the Belarusian Human Rights House Ales Bialiatski gave a press conference for the Lithuanian media.

Let us remind that Ales Bialiatski was arrested on 4 August 2011. In November 2011, as a result of an unfair trial, which clearly revealed the political motivation of the charges, he was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for "tax evasion on a large scale". The reason for prosecution was the information aboout the accounts of Ales Bialiatski in the banks of Lithuania and Poland, passed to the Belarusian security services. The court, ignoring the objective evidence that foreign funds were allocated for a specific purpose (human rights advocacy) and therefore were not subject to taxation, recognized them as personal income Ales Bialiatski.

Ales Bialiatski was released from Babruisk penal colony No. 2 on 21 June, the date of entry into force of the Law "On amnesty in connection with the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Belarus from Nazi invaders", having served almost three years. During this time, the European Union, the United States and international human rights organizations continuously demanded from the Belarusian authorities his unconditional release. Influential human rights organization Amnesty International declared him a prisoner of conscience. The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention of Human Rights Council of the UN considered the case of Ales Bialiatski, recognizing his detention arbitrary.

Belarusian Human Rights House of named after Barys Zvoskau
Vilnius, 27 June 2014
Video by Human Rights Center "Viasna"